Prologue * Introduction

Abstract

Post-industrial society is of strikingly complex nature; progressive division of labour and changes in production and goods structures inducing a deepening interdependency of actors and economic market participators and giving rise — both enabled and enforced by powerful transportation and tele-communication media — to the globalization of markets and, hence, of society as well is accompanied inevi­tably by increasing information demands and more complex control and decision tasks. Whether we concern governmental planning and policy, top level manage­ment decision making of large and particularly multi-national companies, or scien­tific research: more than ever before, rational action crucially depends on our data image of the world, on the inferences we (can) draw from bodies of data — num­bers, in fact — representing reality. In its 17th century beginnings conceived of as disciplina status — a description of state affairs as exemplified by polyhistorian Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s „Staatstafeln“ or political arithmetician John Graunt’s mortality tables - in order to have a means to reason about reality, the role of data representing (views of) the world has undergone transformations since - by pro­posals such as Lambert Adolphe Jacob Quetelet’s Physique sociale (which stipu­lated the homme moyen-concept) in the 19th century - of so profound a nature that reality in our age is data in a very definite sense: there simply is no other way to get hold of our complex world mentally. Thus, preparing and maintaining data images of the world has become a crucial factor of economic prosperity and social self-awareness, and those who take care of these data images are considered to be better off in world-wide competition and political leverage.